“A Voice in the Dark,” by Barbara Nickless (Thomas & Mercer)
If you read the first chapter of A Voice In The Dark,” you’ll finish the book. Colorado Springs author Barbara Nickless’s novel is not only one scary mystery, but itap also a book that makes you wonder: could this really happen? Or worse, is it already happening?
The premise of the book is a Denver teenage boy’s addiction to the dark web. He’s been manipulated into believing that he is not living in the real world, and the only way to transport his family into the real world is by killing them. When the father, mother and brother are murdered, and the boy and his twin sister vanish, two criminal humanists, FBI profilers Helen Belle and Benedict Hoffman, are called in.
The two find the murders eerily similar to a five-year-old case in which another teen killed his family, claiming he was directed to do so by the web’s Midnight Man. Jurors dismissed that idea back then, but now the profilers believe there are too many similarities between the two cases. The Midnight Man is back. After the body of the teenage boy, dead by his own hand, is found in an Ohio field, the FBI pulls out the stops to find his sister.
As they dig deeper into the web, Belle and Hoffman (there’s a romantic connection here, of course) uncover other Midnight Man murders in which vulnerable teens are groomed in the darkest part of the internet for murder. And they find that psychiatrists who ought to be concerned with the evidence of a serial manipulator are their chief detractors.
The mystery is a warning for parents of internet-obsessed teens. Nickless is the author of two heavily researched mystery series, and she knows what she’s writing about. Her research in “A Voice in the Dark” is excellent. Well, with one teeny exception. She has Hoffman’s family settling in Colorado Springs in 1840.
“Climbing Through,” by Melissa Strong (Falcon)
Melissa Strong was in the midst of plans to open her Estes Park restaurant, Bird & Jim, that day in 2017 when a freak accident sent electricity surging through her body. As she fell to the floor, her final thought before passing out was I don’t want to die before I get to open my restaurant.
Strong didn’t die, of course, but the result of her accident was gruesome. The electricity burned holes in her body and threatened to destroy her fingers. Flesh was burned off and bones stuck out. When she was lucid, Strong, an outdoor enthusiast, wondered if she would ever rock-climb again: “Climbing is not a diversion. It defines [my] way of life,” she writes.
Strong’s recovery and her struggle to open her restaurant, as well as return to mountaineering, are chronicled in “Climbing Through,” an autobiography of courage and determination.
Strong spent weeks in the hospital as doctors tried to save her fingers. One told her treatment was difficult because there are not a lot of case studies: Most victims of extreme electrical burns die. She endured experimental treatments and painful skin grafts that saved her fingers but left them distorted. When she was finally released from the hospital, she told a doctor, “I’m afraid I’m going to be attacked by a coyote or some wild animal before I reach the house because I reek of rotting flesh.”
“Climbing Through” isn’t always an easy book to read, but it is an inspiring one because itap the account of a badly injured woman, surrounded by dedicated doctors and devoted friends, who fights to recover her life.
“The Beauty of the Days Gone By,” by Jason Stone ( Atlantic Monthly Press)
After his wife is murdered and his sons kidnapped in an 1866 attack by Native Americans in Texas, R.L. Terry sets off on a lifelong search to find his boys. One son, readers discover (but Terry doesn’t), is absorbed into the Comanche tribe and becomes a fearless warrior. The other simply disappears.
This haunting novel is told from various viewpoints. They include Terry’s son Sam, known by the Comanche name of Pahvo, and Terry’s close friend, Charles Goodnight, now an old man looking back. Goodnight stays with Terry for days during the search for the kidnapped boys but eventually gives up; Terry keeps on, becoming a guide, always on the lookout for news of his sons.
Author Jason Stone infuses his epic novel with Texas history and with descriptions of the brutal Texas plains. He writes of long days on the trail under the blazing sun or bone-chilling cold. You taste the dirt spread by the relentless wind and feel parched for lack of water. Stone’s stories of deprivations are frightening, but you understand the brutality as the Comanche and Kiowa try to protect their lands from incursions by white men seeking to murder Native Americans so they can plunder the earth.
“The Beauty of the Days Gone By” is an epic novel, wisely conceived and written with an understanding of both Natives and settlers.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver author and book reviewer.
